


Oh, Jealousy!

by Nwar



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bodily Fluids, Crime Scene, Domesticity, First Time, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Humor, Jealousy, M/M, Realization, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson Being Idiots, Sherlock dates, Sherlock is Not a Virgin, but literally only for one chapter so like calm down, consulting idiots, gross body description
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-19 17:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 14,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19977703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nwar/pseuds/Nwar
Summary: “But really, you have been going on a lot of dates,” John said.Sherlock blew out a sharp breath. “Well isn’t that what people do when they’re dating? Go on dates?”





	1. Introductions

It said a lot about how John’s life normally went that he was alarmed to come home and hear the sounds of laughter and conversation from upstairs.   
He quickly took the steps, concerned that some other, friendlier people had broken into his flat. When he opened the door, however, there was only Sherlock, in his armchair, and a man that looked vaguely familiar.   
They both stared at John for a moment. The man that was sitting in John’s chair was in his late forties, but fit and well groomed. His brown hair was cut a little longer than the standard side-part, greying tastefully at the sides, and he wore it well. He had soft brown eyes, and a sharp jawline.   
John pulled his hand down from where he’d self consciously been touching the back of his head while looking the man over.   
“Right, uh, hi,” John said, extending a hand to the stranger. He looked familiar, but he couldn’t place him.   
“We’ve met, actually,” the man replied, shaking his hand. He had a soft Scottish burr. “Don’t you remember the Pythagoras case?”   
John snapped his fingers in recognition. “Right! You were the physics professor, weren't you?”  
He smiled tastefully at John. John looked back over at Sherlock, who was eyeing the professor with his brows furrowed. “Professor Cameron.”   
He nodded, glancing between the man smiling innocently up at John from his chair and the strangely focused Sherlock. “Well. I’ll just. Go make some tea.”   
“We have tea.” Sherlock said, still focused on professor Cameron.   
Cameron lifted a tea glass off the side table and tapped it, still wearing that smile that made John oddly irritated.   
“Oh… kay, I’ll just. Go and have a lie down then.” John felt out of his element here. He wasn’t used to Sherlock having guests over.   
John left the room to go up his stairs, and once the door shut he heard them burst into giggles together. He fought the urge to yank the door back open and demand what had been so funny.   
***  
“Okay, Sherlock, who’s texting so much?”   
Sherlock rolled his eyes while pulling off a wet sock from the corpse laying on top of the electric box. “I suppose I should silence my phone more often.”   
“Well my calls never get through to you anyway,” Lestrade grumbled back at him.   
“No, but seriously Sherlock, who’s texting? Is it Mycroft?” John said from the sidelines, already having given his medical opinion on the body.   
Sherlock looked up at him sharply. “I do know other people.”   
“Molly?”   
Sherlock frowned. John would never admit it but he kind of loved when Sherlock frowned because he really threw his whole face into it and it looked quite funny. He’d even put him in a strop on purpose once just to see the wrinkles under his neck appear.   
“I can’t think of anyone else you hang out with,” Lestrade said honestly.   
“Oh! Wait is it em, the Scottish guy--”  
“Not that it’s any of your business, but yes, it is Alexander.”   
Lestrade looked askance at John, “Professor Cameron? From the Pythagoras case? I think it was Dimmock on that one, actually.”   
Lestrade nodded, still looking confused. John understood how he felt.   
***  
“Hey, do you have any plans tonight?”   
“Yes.”   
John stopped in his tracks, halfway back to the sitting room. He had been waiting for Sherlock to confirm that he didn’t so he could finish inviting him to go see a movie in the theaters with him (Sherlock, as John had recently learned, was actually an excellent movie goer. Plop him down in the seat with a family sized bucket of popcorn and he could be silent and attentive for a whole two hours. It was incredible. John thought it might be something in the popcorn butter.), and was thrown off by this change in the script.   
“Oh. Uh, what are you up to?”   
Sherlock looked over at John from the couch, a rare smile gracing his face. “A date.”   
“A date?” John said.   
Sherlock gave him the same look that John gave Sherlock when he was being a bit not good.   
“Right sorry, but… A date? With who?”   
“Alex.”   
John nodded, and then nodded again when his brain connected “Alex” with “professor Cameron from that case that one time”.  
“Dear god, I can actually here your heterosexual panic from here.”   
John snorted. “Not panic, just… surprise. Not at the heterosexual-- or not heterosexual-- part, just at the date part. I didn’t really peg you for the type who, y’know…”   
Sherlock raised his eyebrows at John. “Dates?”   
John shrugged, realizing how silly he sounded. Just because he hadn’t seen Sherlock going on dates doesn’t mean he didn’t.   
“I don’t, much. I just find Alex very… stimulating.”   
John looked over at Sherlock, mouth open in surprise and excitement. “Sherlock, are you blushing?”   
Sherlock glared at him, cheeks rosy. “No.”   
“You are! You like this-- this Alex.”   
“If I didn’t like him I wouldn’t waste my time going on a date, now would I?”   
John tilted his head in acknowledgement, going back to reading on his phone.   
A moment later, “Wait, this isn’t an experiment, right?”   
Sherlock looked over again. “What do you mean?”   
“Like you’re not just going on a date to learn more about human nature or something, are you?”   
Sherlock snorted. “No, John, I actually enjoy Alex’s company. Very much so.”   
John’s stomach turned over. Maybe a gas bubble from lunch. “Well then I wish you all the best.”   
Sherlock didn’t acknowledge the remark, and John pretended he didn’t wait up in his bed to hear Sherlock come home later that night.


	2. Fumblings

John was on his lunch break when he received a call from Lestrade. “Mate, I’m so sorry to bother you at work, but do you know where Sherlock is?”   
A touch of panic heated John’s gut. “No, I thought he was at home.”   
“He’s not answering, and when I went round, Mrs.Hudson said he’d left with some man.”   
“Oh, wait, is he with professor Cameron?”   
“Mrs.Hudson did say a very handsome man.”   
John sighed. Oddly, even though he was relieved to know Sherlock wasn’t off putting himself in danger, the tightness in his belly didn’t release. “They’re probably just out to lunch together or something then.”   
“Right.” Lestrade said. There was a pause. “Uh, do you know if that's--?”   
“Mate, I have no bleeding idea.”   
Lestrade laughed. “Kind of interested to see how this turns out, rather. Talk later.”   
Sherlock was playing his violin when John came home after work.   
“So, I heard you went out to lunch with mister Alex,” John said with a light teasing note in his voice.   
“Don’t call him mister Alex, John, this isn’t grade school.”   
John smiled at Sherlock’s defense. “Oh I’m sorry. Been going on a few dates with this professor Cameron, then, haven’t you?”  
“How did you know we went to lunch?” Sherlock turned, interested to find how John deduced it.   
“Lestrade called in a snit, Mrs. Hudson had said you went with him.”   
Sherlock hummed in response, turning back to the window.   
“But really, you have been going on a lot of dates,” John said.   
Sherlock blew out a sharp breath. “Well isn’t that what people do when they’re dating? Go on dates?”   
John sat down in his armchair and picked up the paper idly. “So you’re dating? Like, official? Boyfriends, are we?”   
Sherlock looked over at him, looking him over with the deduction squint. “What…?”  
John looked up. “Going to meet his parents?”   
“Alex’s parents are both dead.”   
“He gonna meet your parents?”   
“My parents are both annoying. Why are you irritated?”   
“I’m not,” John said, with the same nonchalance with which one says “I’m fine” even though they’re actually steaming.  
“You are, I don’t--” Sherlock cut himself off. “Well, be however you like. Yes, I am dating Alex. Don’t worry, I won’t bring him here and disturb you often.”   
“It’s your flat, too, Sherlock, bring your boyfriend home whenever you like.”   
Sherlock wrinkled his nose at the word boyfriend, but nodded and turned back to his violin.   
***  
Sherlock apparently took advantage of that open invitation rather quickly. John was nearly asleep when he heard a dull thud from downstairs.   
He tensed to get out of bed when he heard giggling, too. Male giggling. Two males, giggling.   
He couldn’t make out the words, exactly, but he recognized Sherlock’s voice, and the other with the Scottish twist-- must be that professor.   
John lay back down. He felt an odd sprig of discomfort at the sound of Sherlock having such a good time with someone else.   
That’s stupid, he thought. Why should I be upset? Sherlock’s having fun. The discomfort didn’t appease.   
John’s ears pricked when the giggles stopped. He couldn’t hear much of anything now, and then--  
Was that a groan? Oh god. Oh, god. John gritted his teeth. He did not want to hear Sherlock getting a leg over.   
There was another aborted giggle from downstairs. John shifted uncomfortably on the bed. The thought of Sherlock-- Sherlock in bed with someone, his voice moaning, someone kissing that gorgeous neck and--  
John squeezed his eyes shut and prepared to put a pillow over his head.   
“No,” he made out the low groan of Sherlock. “No, Alex I--”   
Another aborted moan, not one that sounded like Sherlock. Not that John knew what Sherlock’s sex moans sounded like-- pain moans, yes, but how different could they be?   
He definitely heard “No”, though. He was already pulling back his comforter, climbing off the bed to go turn this shitty Scottish Macfucker’s face concave when he stopped abruptly.   
He stilled to listen in the silence. The MacFucker was leaving, and Sherlock was quietly shutting the door on his back.   
Well. Good. John laid back down. He made the executive decision in his brain to not look too closely at the feelings that had brought up.   
He fell into a quick and deep sleep in the way only an emotionally repressed man can.


	3. Healthy

It continued in that vein for a while. Sherlock went on dates with the professor, John went to work, and they went on cases together.   
Sherlock didn’t bring him back to the flat after that first night, though, and for that, John was grateful. He felt all clenched up whenever he was near the man. John didn’t have a mind palace, but on his running shitlist he upgraded the Macfucker from “mildly irritating” to “in need of chinning”. The next step would be, “he should’ve been disciplined as a child but the second best time would be now and by myself”.   
After about a month of this, Sherlock regularly ducking out in his ridiculously tight shirts and smiling secretively at his phone, John asked, “So, are you and Alex getting on well?”   
Sherlock looked up from the toast he’d been coerced into eating. “Very well. We’re dating.”   
“Yes, no, I got that. But are you two, erm, serious?”   
Sherlock dropped his toast and focused all of his attention on John while still managing to ignore the question. “You don’t like him.”   
“Well I,” John swallowed, and then realizing that lying was a futile maneuver, said, “Yes, you’re right, I don’t.”   
“Why?”  
“I just… don’t.” John said. At Sherlock’s arched eyebrow he continued, “I don’t know, he just rubs me the wrong way.”   
Sherlock looked away to stare at the teapot for a moment, a small smirk growing on his face.   
“What?” John asked, an answering smile coming to his face before he even learned what was so funny.   
“Nothing, just, I was going to say… He rubs me the right way.”   
They looked at each other for a moment before breaking into laughter.   
“Sherlock Holmes making a dirty joke, I never thought I’d live to see the day.”   
Sherlock snorted. “A pun, nonetheless.” That started a fresh wave of giggles.   
A memory occurred to John. “Hey wait, do you remember when we met?”   
Sherlock blew out the breath of the last of the giggles. “Yes, what brought it to mind?”   
“Well, it’s just… You said you were married to your work.”   
Sherlock focused on John, brows furrowed in confusion. “Did I?”   
John nodded with force, “Yes, yes, you definitely did.”   
Sherlock shook his head, eyebrows raised. “No memory of it. I was rather… high on excitement that evening.”   
“Excitement?”   
“You were my first companion, excluding Billy.”  
“Companion! You make it sound like you’re the Doctor,” John waved a hand in dismissal upon Sherlock’s baffled face. “Who was Billy?”   
“The skull.”   
“You named the skull Billy?”  
“No, someone else did.”  
John shook his head. “Anyway. So you’re not married to your work anymore?”   
“Why, are you looking for an opening?”   
John looked at Sherlock in surprise, who rolled his eyes as he explained, “To be the next consulting detective?”   
John chuckled, chastising himself for the place his mind had gone. “No. Nobody else can do that but you. You just seem to be spending a lot of time with this Alex fellow, I mean, you’ve taken fewer cases even, and we don’t even--”  
Sherlock looked at him, waiting for the rest of the sentence. John was going to mention that they’d barely spent any time together in the last month before realizing he sounded like a clingy girlfriend.   
“I just want to be sure you’re going about this in a healthy way.” John finished lamely.   
Sherlock shrugged, crossing his legs and looking away from John toward the window before answering in an airy tone, “Oh yes, Alex always wears a condom.”   
Inside John’s mind there is a little man turning a crank to continue his brain function. He imagined Sherlock’s had a steam engine, but John just had the miniature version of himself and the hand crank. The brain man stopped turning and gaped at Sherlock too.   
After a solid ten seconds of his brain being entirely offline, John managed to take a sip of tea, and his little crank man starting going at double speed with the influx of information. Alex wore a condom, that meant Sherlock was likely on the receiving end. Sherlock on his back, long legs curved around his waist, Sherlock on top, lacing his finger’s with Johns, head thrown back in ecstasy as he rode John--  
Not John. John shook his head sharply. Sherlock riding Alex--   
John blinked and raised his eyebrows down at the table. Shouldn’t even be thinking about Sherlock in bed, anyway. But really, who could be blamed when the word “condom” just casually dropped out of Sherlock’s incredibly posh, plush lips?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can anyone guess who named the skull Billy?


	4. Epintphanies

John came home from the clinic a few days later to find Alex sitting next to Sherlock at the kitchen table. They were sitting on both sides of the corner of the table, bent over a palm-sized scrap of paper together. Alex was using Sherlock’s slide out magnifying glass to look closely at the script. Sherlock was also bent over, but appeared to just be hovering and watching Alex look. There hair was touching, they were so close.   
John’s little man briefly left his place at the crank to slide Macfucker’s name further up the shitlist scoreboard.   
“What’s this then?” John asked with forced cheerfulness.   
Alex looked up, and Sherlock immediately yanked the magnifying glass from his extended hand to look for himself. “A scroll was found in a recent excavation in Egypt. I was allowed to see it only for a moment while it was passed around in my department, but I copied down as much as I could for Sherlock.”  
John nodded. “What was on the scroll?”   
Sherlock looked up, bright eyes and giant, open mouthed grin making him look ten years younger. “Physics, John! The library in Alexandria may have had evidence of planets in the solar system hundreds of years before their previously recorded discovery!”  
John snorted, leaning over the other corner of the table with his fists on the wood. “I thought you’d deleted the solar system.”   
Sherlock glanced over at Alex, and when they made eye contact, a light blush crept up Sherlock’s neck. “I retrieved it from the trash can.”   
Externally, John was mostly calm, save a brief flaring of nostrils. Internally, the Macfucker was waving a red flag and John was a bull blowing hot air around a nose ring.   
How dare he? Sherlock had deleted the solar system to make room for more important things, what’s gone out if he’s remembering this now? Why was he trying to change Sherlock?  
It was at this point, John halfway to boiling, that Alex smiled, leaned across the corner, and softly kissed Sherlock.   
John had run out of metaphors for his thought process. Nothing existed in his head at all except for this image, Sherlock being kissed, Alex partially obscuring his blushing, adorable face with his stupid head, and John standing across the table from the vignette, very much not being included. It was almost like that time his therapist had tried to get him to meditate by letting all of his thoughts go and only focusing on one thing; at the time, John had thought it entirely impossible. Now, however, his brain was seriously empty as it tried to move beyond dumbly staring at Sherlock’s soft, dramatic-shaped lips and being desperately furious they weren’t touching his own.   
John blinked. In high school, John had a distinct memory of a teacher trying over and over and over again to explain a mathematical concept to him. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t ever remember the formula because he had no idea what any of the steps did. He pushed at it for weeks before the teacher finally sent him to the tutor. The tutor explained it again, this time as a metaphor with little doors and hidden numbers behind them. John remembered this because the breakthrough moment, the click as the knowledge finally slotted in his brain and he understood it, had felt so good. Like coming to the surface to breathe in after floating underwater for a long time.   
John gasped.   
Alex and Sherlock looked at him, Sherlock’s eyebrows coming down as he opened his mouth to make a scathing comment on how John could handle bullets flying at him but not seeing his own flatmate kiss another man, but John held one finger up. “Right. Nope. Not having it. Be back in a few.”   
John turned right around and walked back out the door.   
***  
“Mike, I’m serious. I feel like my whole world has been flipped upside down.”   
“Because Sherlock has a boyfriend now?” Mike asked skeptically, taking a sip from his beer.  
“Yes! No, no, just. Sherlock has a boyfriend and it’s not-- well, it’s not me.”  
“If you wanted to date Sherlock, why didn’t you do it before now? That is why I introduced you.”   
“But see, before now I didn’t-- wait,” John gave Mike a disbelieving look. “That’s why you introduced us? You thought we would date?”  
“Well it’s quite obvious, isn’t it?” Mike said.  
John grunted. He got quite enough of that at home. “Not obvious to me.”   
“I tend to pick up on things. Not as much as Sherlock, and not in the same way but-- I understand people.” Mike shrugged. “I’m good at knowing what they really want. Sherlock mentioned to me that he was looking for a flatmate. Now, have you ever noticed how Sherlock dresses?”   
“Like a posh bastard?” John snorted into his pint.   
“Exactly. That coat must cost more than my rent. So why would he need a flatmate if he can clearly afford to live alone?”  
John hummed. He’d never considered that.   
“And you,”   
“Me?”  
“Yes, you,” Mike inclined his head. “You were right back from a warzone, grumpy and frankly, a bit bitchy.”   
John opened his mouth, only to be silenced by Mike’s aloft hand. “Don’t argue, you snapped at me quite enough in a five minute conversation for me to have irrefutable proof. You needed a man who could one, put you in your place by out-bitching you, and two, give you an exciting return to action. Who did a know that could do that? Why, the big posh bastard in the floppy coat who I happened to know had a distinct taste for military men.”   
John choked on his sip. “Pardon?” he squeaked.   
“Don’t ask me how I learned that, it’s not mine to impart.”   
John shook his head like an etch-a-sketch to dismiss the image of Sherlock and military men. “Okay. So. What do I do now?”  
“Well, he’s dating someone else now.”   
“Mmm, yeah,” John said, clearly not seeing the obstacle.   
“Which means he can’t date you.”   
“Well-- Okay, maybe for most, but,” John stammered. “I’m, we’re… best friends. More than best friends. I’d take a bullet for him.”   
“You did, in a way.”   
John smiled into his glass. “I did sort of, didn’t I?”


	5. Enjoying Yourself?

Step one: realize you have a crush on your flatmate.   
Step two: sexuality crisis (surprisingly brief).  
Step three: scheme and plot and break their little house down.   
Step four: get that tall, posh bastard out of your dreams and on to your lap. 

When John came home later that night, Alex was gone and Sherlock was in his bedroom; John could see the light coming out from under his door. He decided to take a shower to calm down a bit after that conversation with Stamford.   
John doesn’t like to advertise the fact, but he tends to talk to himself. Not aloud or anything, but inside his head, two miniature versions of himself (the crank being operated by the third) debated back and forth like sports gambits near constantly.   
He started taking off his clothes, and turned on the shower to let it heat.   
“So, you’re in love with Sherlock Holmes.” his mind said.   
“Whoa, whoa whoa,” the other half replied, leaning back in its chair and throwing its hands up, “Who said anything about love?”   
“I did. We love him.”   
“We love him as a MATE,” the other half said.   
“We were just thinking about him riding our cock earlier this week.”   
“I was thinking about it this morning while John was still asleep, nevermind earlier this week.”   
John got in the shower.   
“At any rate,” the more rational half digressed, “we have to deal with this. How are we going to tell him?”   
“How can we? He’s dating someone else. He doesn’t want us.”  
“He does! He just doesn’t know it.”  
“He’s Sherlock Holmes, he knows everything.”   
“He didn’t figure out that you want him,” the other half pointed out.  
“I didn’t know I want him! This is all happening rather quickly. I’m not gay!” The crank-John in the background snorted in response to this.   
John sighed heavily. He did have to come to terms with that. If he went through with this, if he really dated Sherlock, he would be in a relationship with a man. He’d fooled around with men before, sure, he did go to university, but he hadn’t ever actually had any sort of future with a man. Long nights together on the couch, going out to eat together, doing their favorite things in tandem.   
John paused in soaping up his loofah. Well, that all sounded rather like things he did with Sherlock already. The only thing missing was physical contact, really.  
And telling everyone.   
John groaned at the thought. Donovan alone would be an entire days work of rebuilding his self-esteem.   
John paused. Returned to his mind debaters.   
“Sherlock is gorgeous.”   
The other half nodded emphatically. “I think we can all agree on that.”   
“And we are?”   
John and the debaters all looked down at his naked body in the shower. He ran a soapy hand over a belly that was softening as he approached middle age. He looked at his ugly hobbit feet. He brought a hand up to touch the ragged, ramshackle scar tissue in his shoulder. Finally, he poured some shampoo in his hand and scrubbed it through his wiry, greying hair.   
“Point taken,” the other debater said.   
“It’d have to be a perfect storm for this to work out. You’d have to admit you might not be entirely straight, he’d have to break up with a man he seems perfectly happy with, AND he’d have to be attracted to you in turn. What are the chances?”   
“I’m still attractive. A secretary at the clinic flirted with me the other day.”  
“She was trying to get you as a sugar daddy before she saw you head back to the GP area and realized you were poor, too.”   
“Still. An attractive sugar daddy. A silver fox.”   
The cranker snorted, and both of the debaters whipped around to snap “shut up!”   
“Whatever. We don’t need flashy looks. He’s our best friend. He loves us, too. Otherwise he wouldn’t live with us, like Mike said.”   
“Maybe he actually hates us and is just too nice to ask us to move out.”   
“Have you ever known Sherlock to be quote unquote, too nice?”   
John rinsed himself off, smiling to himself. A knock sounded on the door.  
“John?” Sherlock’s deep voice came through. “Are you alright?”   
An idea, a brilliant, brilliant idea, occurred to John. He scrambled out of the shower and yanked open the linen closet, rifling through the back area behind the towels. He’d hidden it there, where Sherlock never looked since Sherlock never replaced the towels and always took the one on the bar.   
John found them on top of his old uniform and pulled them on over his head. He wrapped a towel around his waist. “Yep, yeah, one moment.”   
He pulled open the door, tightening his abdomen as much as he could without looking constipated. His dog tags bounced against his chest.  
Sherlock froze, eyes going into a deductive squint as he roved down John’s chest to rest on the dog tags. He pulled his gaze back up to John’s eyes. “You were in there for forty-five minutes. I was worried you had drowned.”   
John grinned. He was pulling every trick that had ever worked on a girl in recent memory. “Nope, just. Enjoying myself.”   
Sherlock blinked. He gave his head a little shake, curls shimmying with the motion. “Um. Okay.”  
Sherlock walked away. John walked up to his bedroom, shut the door, and let out a breath. His tummy relaxed back into the natural paunch.


	6. An Answer

“Mmm, okay. We have a woman whose earrings have gone missing every evening and reappeared on her sink the next morning every night for--”  
“Obvious, husband cross-dressing.”  
John glanced up from the computer at Sherlock stomping about in his dressing gown and pajama bottoms.  
“Right, ehm… We have a couple who says their dog--”  
“Not interested.”  
“You have to take at least one of them. C’mon, this woman says she’s being stalked, we have to help her.”  
“Stalked? By who?”  
“Let’s see, a man… from Tinder?”  
“Oh, easy, it’s her neighbor. Not being stalked, she sees him because they live in the same building.”  
John mouthed what? up at the ceiling in amazement. “Okay, how about this: This teenager says he always does his work correctly, almost every question perfect, and yet he’s failing the class. He thinks his maths professor is trading his scores for another student’s.”  
“Hmm, no-- wait,” Sherlock whipped around toward him. “It’s maths homework?”  
John nodded, “Yeah, he says here--”  
“I’ll take the case. Tell him we’ll drive to whatever school he attends.”  
John felt his stomach fluttering with the excitement of a new case. John didn’t know what Sherlock found so mysterious in this one over the others, but he was ready for the chase again. This is what John and Sherlock were about, this is what they are. The thrill of the game, blood pumping through their veins, just the two of them against--  
“Alex? Love, I’ve found a case I think I could use you on. Please do come along with us, since you want to see what we do so desperately.” Sherlock grinned into the phone speaker.  
John growled quietly.  
***  
An hour later, Sherlock and Alex were prowling along the corridor of the high school while John completed the triangle behind them. Bloody long legged bastards, six feet and all, making John scurry like a fucking mouse behind their stupid--  
“John, do keep up.” Sherlock said, looking down at his phone.  
John put a bit extra speed in his step, pulling up on Sherlock’s other side. “Sherlock, what are we doing here?”  
“A case, did you forget already?”  
“No, I know it’s a case, but couldn’t you have, you know,” Sherlock looked down at him imperiously. “Solved it from home, like the others this morning.”  
“Yes of course, but Alex wanted a look into my work so I’m inviting him to see what I do.”  
John nodded, looking ahead again. He glared holes into the linoleum floor.  
They arrived at the teacher’s office, the teenager, Teddy, that had messaged them, already waiting across the desk from his maths teacher.  
“Ah, Teddy, delighted,” Sherlock reached out to shake his hand. “And mister Hargrove, I presume?”  
“Yes, I am, who are you? Who are these men?” the teacher gestured to Alex and John like they were Sherlock’s hired muscle.  
“Sherlock Holmes and John Watson,” John said placatingly. “We’re er, detectives.”  
“And I’m Alexander Cameron, professor of physics at Imperial College.”  
The teacher blinked in bewilderment. “Um. Okay. Well, what seems to be the problem, officers and professor?”  
They collectively came to the same conclusion to let the teacher go on believing that they were with law enforcement. “Well, Teddy here thinks there may be a problem with his homework.” Sherlock stated.  
“I told you already mister Hargrove, I do all of my work right. I know it’s right, I double, triple check it. So why are my grades so bad?”  
The teacher sighed. “I enter all of the information that you put, the computer is just scoring it as you wrote. Maybe if you showed your work I could find the problem, but…” he shrugged.  
“Yes, if you could show your work, Teddy,” Sherlock implored.  
Once the notes were out on the desk, Sherlock and Alex bent over them.  
“What do you think, hmm? Are they correct?”  
Alex shook his head in confusion. “These are all perfect. Formulas followed correctly, right formula… I mean I haven’t seen this sort of stuff since tenth grade, but it all checks out.”  
Sherlock whipped his head up to glare at mister Hargrove, who gulped like a cartoon. John smiled tightly and braced himself.  
“So here we have a professor from Imperial College, best in his field, telling you that your student is doing perfect work and should be receiving straight marks, and yet you still claim that he’s failing the class? Are you an idiot or in fact, malicious? Whose grades are you trading for Teddy’s here? Your own child attends this school, is it in fact their failing grades you’re foisting on him for your own boasting rights?”  
John secretly loved when Sherlock talked a mile a minute to intimidate clients. It was fun watching their eyes get wider and wider.  
“No! No, I promise, I’m just entering the answers as he gives them to me.”  
“Ah, so you are an imbecile then! Let’s enter these ourselves then, if you’re so sure.”  
Sherlock came around the desk as Hargrove quickly pulled up the grading software. Sherlock pulled a sheet of Teddy’s homework and entered a problem. “There. An answer confirmed to be correct by the smartest mathematician in the city, and--” Sherlock dramatically hit enter. A red screen illuminated Sherlock’s pale face.  
He glanced up at Alex, who was struggling not to laugh.  
“Did you give me the wrong answer?” Sherlock demanded.  
“No, hand to god, that’s correct.”  
Sherlock looked back at the screen, still glowing red. He looked utterly baffled.  
John came around the desk, and Sherlock distractedly made room for him. The tall genius was now staring off into the distance, looking hurt and confused. John ignored the puppy dog eyes for the moment to focus on the screen.  
He looked at the homework, and then at the screen. He tilted his head, and then held the paper up next to the screen.  
“What’s problem A?”  
“That’s where you write your name.” “The first problem you solve.” Teddy and the teacher responded at the same time.  
John smirked, and edited the answer on the computer screen to move the answer up one space. He hit enter.  
The screen lit up green.  
***  
“You know, I was hoping I’d get to see your genius in action today,” Alex said, popping a bite of garlic bread into his mouth. “But instead I got to see you beaten by your little doctor companion.”  
John frowned at that comment, but before he could respond, Sherlock said, “Yes, well, I have the brains but John has common sense. Which really isn’t quite so common now, though.”  
Alex nodded. “But there’s something I don’t understand, Sher.”  
John looked up at Sherlock to see his response to being called “Sher”. To his disappointment, he didn’t flinch at all. “I don’t see how you could miss anything, the case was so cut and dry.”  
“Why did you have to be so mean to the teacher?”  
Sherlock and John both froze. John looked to Sherlock at his side, and then across the table at Alex. They were in a staring match. “What do you mean?”  
“Well, you called him an idiot and an imbecile.”  
“He was both.”  
“Yeah, but you made the same mistake he did. You owe him an apology.”  
Sherlock’s eyes hardened. “I really don’t owe him anything.”  
“An apology would not be out of line.”  
“Bending my morals to accommodate someone else seems malapropos to me.”  
“A little bit of bending does not a break make, mo ghràdh.”  
Was that fucking scots gaelic? Oh this Macfucker was moving up the shitlist like a champion racehorse. Pretentious, probably kilt-owning--  
“John and I have to go now.”  
“We do?” John asked stupidly, shoving the last of his spaghetti in his mouth.  
“Yes, we must investigate the earring case before the close of business, remember? Farewell, Alexander.”  
John followed Sherlock without looking back for Alex.  
They walked down the street a few blocks, John huffing to keep up with Sherlock stomping at the speed of stroppiness. “So what was that about?”  
“Hmm?”  
“Seems like you two weren’t just arguing about the case.”  
Sherlock looked down at John appraisingly. “John… you know I trust you entirely.”  
John swallowed, stomach heating at gazing into Sherlock’s eyes. “Yes, of course.”  
“So I can trust you to keep my relationship and the details thereof in confidence.” Sherlock didn’t phrase it as a question, but stated it with some trepidation.  
“Of course, yeah.”  
“Okay,” Sherlock said slowly, hailing a cab. “Well, Alex has been. Hmm. I’m not sure of the word, but repeatedly telling me I should be-- I’m really not sure how to say this.”  
John climbed into the cab and waited for Sherlock to get settled so that he could look him in the face when he said, “You can tell me anything, Sherlock, I really won’t judge.”  
“Thank you, John, that truly means very much to me,” Sherlock said stiffly, as if he wasn’t used to being told things like that. “I suppose it could be boiled down to the fact that Alex wants me to be a bit more… to follow the rules more, I… I guess that’s a way to say it.”  
John hummed, not quite understanding. “Could you give us an example?”  
“He wants me to be nicer, as you just saw demonstrated. And yet, also less-- considerate.”  
“Considerate how?”  
Sherlock blushed. “Well. I have-- I refused to let him…” Sherlock cleared his throat. “I only ever sleep over at his flat.”  
“Sleep over?”  
“Have sex.”  
John cleared his throat now. “Right. Okay, why?”  
“Because you live at our flat.”  
John nodded, waiting.  
“And you’re uncomfortable with our relationship, so I don’t see the harm in excluding the physical parts of our relationship from the location of 221B. Alex disagreed.”  
“I’m not--” John sighed. He stared down at his hands on his lap to get out, “It’s not that I’m uncomfortable with you being-- I really was telling the truth when I said it’s all fine; boyfriend, girlfriend, I don’t care. I just don’t-- Alex leaves a bad taste in my mouth.”  
John looked up to see Sherlock’s response to that, and was shocked to see a barely tamped down smirk on his face. They made eye contact.  
“Hey! No, no more jokes. I’m serious. I don’t like the way he treats you.”  
Sherlock sobered up. “Yes, I’m starting to not like the way he treats me either.”  
John felt a flutter of excitement, and then a wave of guilt. He should not be excited at the thought of them breaking up, and yet, he absolutely did. “What are you going to do about it?”  
“I’m not sure,” Sherlock said, pulling his coat in around himself and crossing his arms. “I’ll have to think.”  
The cab stopped at 221B, and they both went up to the flat.


	7. Decisions, Decisions

And think Sherlock did. For three days, Sherlock was laying on the couch staring at the ceiling when John came down in the morning, and was in the same position when he went to bed at night. John assumed he went to the bathroom while John was asleep or something.   
“You better come to a conclusion soon, or else you’ll be too dehydrated to function.”   
Sherlock dropped a hand from his chin to snatch a water bottle from the side of the couch and rattle it at John. John almost dropped his cup of tea in shock-- it was the first time Sherlock had moved or spoken since he’d come back from the homework case.   
“Oh, well, good then. Have you come to a conclusion?” John sat in his armchair but angled himself toward the couch to see Sherlock.   
He sighed heavily. “I have.”   
John nodded. “Mmm, breakups can be heard. Try to let him down easy, y’know, not you it’s me, et cetera et cetera.”   
Sherlock sat upright on the couch and looked back at John. “That’s not the conclusion to which I came.”   
John’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh?”  
“No. The solution is very easy, I can’t believe I didn’t see it in the first place. Years ago, really.”   
“Pardon?” the disappointment of Sherlock and Alex not breaking up was befuddling his brain.   
“Alex is right. I need to be nicer.”   
“Well, hold on--”   
“And you, and Lestrade, and Molly, and my parents. You’re all right. Everyone’s been telling me my whole life, but I never saw any point in it. Now I know.”   
John was starting to feel sick. “Know what?”  
“What I can lose if I don’t change my behavior.”  
John shook his head. “Now wait just a second. You’re going to change your whole personality around just for-- this man?”   
Sherlock raised an eyebrow at John. “My whole personality is being rude?”   
“I didn’t-- you know what I mean. Why should you have to change yourself? Why can’t the Macfucker appreciate you for what you are?”   
Sherlock, who had been distractedly tuning his violin, looked back at John. “What was that?”   
“I said why doesn’t Alex just like you for yourself? Why do you have to change?”   
“Because if I don’t change, I won’t have him anymore.”  
“And that’s such a tragedy?”   
“Not precisely. I like Alex, and I like having regular affection with someone, but he’s likely to be passing,” Sherlock said simply. John’s heart raced a bit. “It’s everyone else that’s the problem. Alex is fairly representative of the population at large. If I don’t become nicer, better, then eventually, everyone else will leave too.”   
“I won’t,” John blurted out.   
“You will eventually. You’re already getting tired of body parts in the sink and yelling at clients and playing the violin while you’re sleeping.”   
“Trying to sleep.”   
“Exactly. You don’t like it, it’s not nice, I should stop.” Sherlock straightened as he turned away. “I will stop.”   
“No, Sherlock, you won’t. I won’t let you, actually.” Sherlock whipped his head to stare at John, body slowly turning to follow.   
“Excuse me?”   
“You may think yourself above human folly, but I know what’s going on here. Saying you should be better, that if you change people will like you more,” John inclined his head. “Your self esteem has taken a hit. And my professional opinion is that if someone you date is damaging your self esteem, you leave that fucker at the curb without a word of apology.”   
“You’re biased, you don’t like him either way.”  
“I like him less the more you tell me, but I’m telling you the truth here. You should never have to change to be loved. You shouldn't change. The people you know, me, Lestrade, Molly, Mrs.Hudson, we all like you exactly the way you are. Yes, you make mistakes, and yes, you do things we don’t always understand or like, but we like the person who does them.”   
Sherlock looked utterly stunned. He jaw was hanging open like he was trying to catch flies. He collapsed down onto his chair across from John.   
“You’re telling the truth,” Sherlock’s eyes were wide and shining in awe. “You really believe that.”   
John nodded. “I do.”   
“And you think I should leave Alex?”   
A knife of uncertainty twisted in John’s stomach. “Well. Yes, but I admit I’m not-- entirely unbiased on the subject.”   
Sherlock tilted his head at John. “Why?”   
John picked up the newspaper quickly. “Hmm?”   
“Why are you not unbiased?”  
“Ehm… Not sure,” John said, pretending to be entirely enthralled in the paper.   
“You don’t like him…” Uh oh. That was the deducing voice. Here comes the whammy, John thought. “And not just because of how he treats me.”   
“Yes, Sherlock, of course because of how he treats you.”   
“Could it be racial tension? You did call him “the Macfucker.”” Sherlock wondered.   
“I have nothing against scotsman in general. Look, Sherlock I. Could you just--” John squared his shoulders. “In truth, the bias comes from--”  
“Sherlock, John, we need you immediately. Mass murder.” Lestrade bent over in the door frame, catching his breath from running up the stairs. “Did you really not hear me coming up?”


	8. Someone Special

Sherlock and John climbed out of the cab on the dirty edges of London, the unfashionable end of the Thames on their left and a large, abandoned warehouse in front of them. Shipping containers sat rusting to their right. Sherlock and John, in unspoken agreement, were focused on the case and temporarily ignoring the Alex problem.   
They walked in, following Lestrade to the area where all the bodies were scattered. They were arranged as if they’d fallen gracefully, but there was vomit and urine around them that said nothing about their deaths had been peaceful. There were maybe fifteen people, all told.   
“Jesus,” John said. There were spray-painted messages on the wall, letters about the length of an arm, that spewed various threatening messages.  
“‘You’re next’? ‘Coming for you’?” John asked Lestrade. “What does this mean?”  
“We have no idea. Never seen anything like it.” Lestrade shook his head at the scene.   
“John. Your medical opinion, please.”  
He obediently followed Sherlock to the body he was bent over. “Must be a poison. Based on the vomit and amount of blood in the uh, fecal matter, I’d say something homemade. Cleaning chemicals, seems most likely.”   
Sherlock shook his head. “Well, yes, but this one.”   
John looked at the body he was indicating, a girl, maybe sixteen, in the rough center of the arrangement of bodies. He bent down, carefully avoiding dipping the knee of his jeans in the various fluids.   
“No vomit on the mouth… lots of detritus around her but…” John tilted his head carefully to inspect her body, lifting her flower-patterned duster with the tip of his gloved finger. “Not from her.”   
Sherlock made eye contact with him over the body. “Bingo. We’ve got our lead.”   
John stood, but Sherlock stayed down, gently patting on and around the girl’s body, carefully avoiding mussing any evidence. “Ah! Even better!” He held a cell phone aloft pinched in his fingers.   
John wandered off, starting to feel nauseated by the smell. He scanned around the warehouse in boredom as Sherlock went over each body. He stopped by a set of concrete stairs.   
“Lestrade?” He called. “Has anyone been upstairs?”   
“Uh, no, haven’t gotten to it,” Lestrade said distractedly, writing down the deductions Sherlock spewed at rapid pace.   
Sherlock broke off. “John, what is it?”   
“There’s footprints here on the steps.”   
Sherlock raced over, observing the foot prints in the dust. He waved a photographer over quickly to take a picture of the footprints before running up the stairs. John was right on his tail.   
The second floor didn’t hold more bodies, but it did have more writing. ‘They’re going to get you too’, ‘be more careful’, ‘they can find you’.  
“They… Why they?” Sherlock muttered.  
“It’s not a threat, it’s a warning.” John realized.   
Sherlock’s head snapped toward him. He smiled at John. “Yes. Yes it is.” John smiled back, electricity crackling down his spine with the pride in Sherlock’s eyes.   
“There are a fuckton of dead bodies downstairs, lads, might want to take it down a notch.” Lestrade grunted.   
Sherlock’s phone rang, but he ignored it as he ran across the concrete floor to take pictures of the messages.   
Sherlock’s phone cut off, and then started ringing again. Donovan and Anderson, along with the photographer and a few other staff followed up the stairs and started collecting evidence. There wasn’t much, but they scraped the dust off the floor and took pictures, grasping at straws.   
“Is it the-- the people downstairs, did they warn us before they died?” Lestrade asked.  
“No,” Sherlock and John answered in unison from opposite ends of the empty warehouse floor.   
Sherlock’s phone rang again. “Oy, freak, can you just answer it?”   
Sherlock grunted in irritation, pulling his phone out of his pocket. He looked at the screen and turned off the ringer without answering the call. John caught his eye across the scene, nodding slightly to acknowledge that they both knew it was Alex.   
John was surprised to feel his own phone buzz a moment later. It was an unknown number.   
“Hello?”   
“John, it’s Alex.”   
John raised his eyebrows at Sherlock and blinked in surprise. He started walking over toward him.   
“Uh, hi Alex. How can I help you?”   
“Sherlock’s not answering his phone.”   
“He rarely does.”   
Alex’s irritated huff of laughter echoed down the phone and made John want to hit something. “I really wish he would.”   
“If wishes were horses,” John said, barely cutting himself off before he called him Macfucker.   
“Is he okay? He arranged this dinner and now he’s just… not showing.”   
“He’s fine, yeah, we’re at a crime scene. I don’t think he’ll be done in time for dinner.”  
“No, I imagine not, since I’ve already been stood up here for a half hour.”   
John caught Sherlock’s eye, silently asking if he wanted to take over the phone call. He shook his head no, ducking his gaze down to his phone. “Yeah, no, well,” John said awkwardly. “We are doing… work, so if you just wanted to-- actually, he’ll call you when he’s finished.”   
There was a tense pause on the other side of the phone, and then a sigh. “Okay. Well. I’ll see him when I see him, I guess. Goodbye.”  
John put his phone back in his pocket, shaking his head at Alex’s short tone. “He’s angry with you, Sherlock.”   
Sherlock hummed in acknowledgement, but otherwise didn’t respond.   
John walked back over to Lestrade, far enough away to be out of earshot among the voices of the forensic team. He lifted his eyebrows to let Lestrade know he was ready to talk.   
“So, who’s this Alex guy?” Lestrade obliged John.   
“His boyfriend, I think. I don’t like the bloke.”   
Lestrade looked askance.   
“He thinks Sherlock should be nicer.”   
“Don’t we all?”   
“Yeah, but he’s actively trying to make it happen.”   
Lestrade huffed a shocked breath. “That doesn’t sound healthy.”   
“Thought the same thing myself.”   
“Do you think it’s going to, you know, last very long?”   
“God I hope not.” John said honestly.   
Sherlock came over from where he’d been colluding with a forensic aide holding a laptop. “John, let’s go, I found the girl.”   
He moved to dash toward the stairs but paused. “Lestrade… her name is Alison Hitch, disappeared yesterday afternoon. You can find her address and things on here.” He dropped the girl’s phone into Lestrade’s hand.   
Lestrade, startled, said his thanks. Sherlock was already walking toward the stairs, and John waved goodbye as he quickly followed.   
“So who is the girl?” John asked.   
Sherlock smirked with the triumph of a solid lead. “Someone special.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me reading over this to edit: "It's not a threat it's a warning"  
> My brain, which operates on google autocomplete: "be careful with me!"


	9. Photographs

Lestrade was very reluctant, but finally allowed Sherlock and John to tour the parents’ house, on the condition that they don’t actually interact with them. John overheard them talking to the police in the kitchen, and it caused a pain in his chest to hear the mother sobbing.   
He kept his hands clasped behind his back as he looked around the house. From what he could tell, it seemed like a normal, average home. Middle class, single child. Both parents working, latchkey kid.   
John really was picking up a lot from Sherlock. He had to put the effort in, but when he did, he started to see things that came a lot more easily to Sherlock-- but didn’t come to most people at all. The wear of the furniture-- not replaced in a few years, but not secondhand. Middle class. Single child-- no other children in the family pictures, only three coats on the hooks by the door. Both parents working; two pairs of restaurant non-slip shoes by the door, one pair smaller. Latchkey kid-- what else could they be, if both parents worked?   
John moved on down the hallway, quite proud of himself thus far. He inspected each photo on the wall. A family portrait on a family trip to America, Alison appearing maybe ten. An engagement photo of the parents. A baby photo. John stopped at a picture that was set below eye level, the place that people put photos they didn’t particularly like; a friend’s baby or a dog that passed away.   
The photo was of Alison and some friends. Her arms were around a tall, athletic teenager with long blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. He was wearing a loose tee shirt and tight, dark pants. He was definitely attractive, more than anyone else in the picture, and Alison was snuggled tightly into his side. On his other side was another girl, dark haired and smiling weakly, turned half away from the photographer. There was a third friend, what looked to be another boy on Alison’s other side, who was blurred like he’d walked out of frame. John couldn’t be sure, but he thought he’d seen the other girl on the floor in the warehouse, too.  
Something about the picture threw John off. There was a smudge on the glass, and John unthinkingly went to buff it out with his shirt cuff. It didn’t budge, though.   
Oh! John stood up quickly in excitement. The picture was taken through glass that had a smudge on it. The photo itself had captured a smudge.   
So, someone who Alison spent time with, clearly quite close to based on her proximity in the photo. Picture taken through glass, photo hung lower than the others; the parents didn’t like these friends and the friends wouldn’t willingly submit to being photographed.   
John startled when he straightened and almost hit Sherlock on the chin.   
John pointed at the photograph, silent so that they wouldn’t interfere with the police and parents next door. Sherlock took it off the wall and studied it for a moment.   
He nodded. He whispered, pointing to the tall blond in the photo; “Boyfriend. I came to the same conclusion. Let’s find him.”   
***  
Sherlock knocked on the door. A blond man, early forties, opened the door cautiously.   
“Hello?”  
“Hello, Sherlock Holmes,” Sherlock extended his hand through the small gap in the door. The man opened the door further to shake it. “We’re investigating the death of Alison Hitch, we’d very much appreciate an opportunity to interview your son.”   
Sherlock smiled the teethy smile that said “We’d love if you agreed, but you’d really, really hate it if you didn’t agree.”   
“Uh, he’s not home. Hasn’t been since Monday, actually.”   
Sherlock tilted his head in curiosity. “Is that so? Does he do this often?” Sherlock subtly starting leaning forward until the man unconsciously took a step backward, which gave him the opportunity to step inside.  
“No, actually, he almost never leaves his room nowadays. Are you with the police?”   
John nodded tightly as he followed Sherlock into the house. “Is his bedroom up here?”   
“Um, yes, but I’d really prefer if you didn’t--”   
“Reasonable suspicion, don’t need a warrant!” Sherlock called down, already climbing the stairs.   
John followed, ignoring the father spluttering in confusion and anger.  
When John walked into the room, the first thing he noticed was the smell. The absolute mess was a close second, though.   
It smelled awful, rotting, and salty like sweat and mold. There was trash scattered around the floor and the bed were a crumpled mess of dirty sheets. The worst of it was in front of the desk by the window, which had a black pillowcase stapled over it.   
The majority of the trash was piled around the desk, surrounding a high backed leather desk chair. Sherlock was rifling through the closet, scarf pulled over his nose to block the smell. There was a lacrosse stick propped in the corner, but covered in dust. Other than that, it was hard to really see more about the room since it was so messy.   
John leaned over the mountain of trash around the desk, mostly food wrappers and empty soda bottles, but also-- John noted with disgust-- crumpled tissues. He pulled a glove out of his pocket that he’d nicked from the scene, and clicked the computer mouse in front of the frankly monstrously large desktop. The screen lit up immediately, displaying all of the windows that had been open recently.   
“Sherlock, you’re going to want to see this.” John said shakily, eyes scanning the screen.


	10. Charm

Chris Atcher was a charming kid. Even in handcuffs, skin and hair greasy with lack of washing, and athletic body destroyed by ten hours of internet browsing a day, he was getting sympathy from the officers arresting him.   
On his computer they’d found thousands of visits logged on the dark web, pictures of photoshopped creatures and pseudo-fascist promotional images. There was an amazon order for cleaning materials, as John had suspected, but also a bulk sized bottle of sleeping pills. He was a regular visitor of anonymous websites, contributing to message boards about radicalized conspiracy theories, and groups for discussing humanity’s downfall.   
The police also found chatroom records between Chris and each of the victims found in the warehouse. Chris had been detailing the conspiracy theories to each person, showing them “proof” of the creatures that were going to take over the world, telling them that they would control the mind of whoever they chose to inhabit and torture them, a fate worse than death.   
The images were disturbing, but not as bad as the crime that he’d committed in convincing all of those people to join him in the abandoned outskirt and drink poison.   
He’d told all of them what he considered the truth, preached to them, charmed and manipulated them into following his plan and killing themselves to avoid being taken by these pretend monsters. And all of them had listened, had drank the poison-- except for Alison. Alison was his first follower, a friend from his past, the woman who was by his side every step of the way.   
For Alison, he gave her sleeping pills. He didn’t want to see her suffer like the others. He’d had a moment of weakness.   
The police had caught him on the train to the chunnel, and arrested him within 24 hours of finding the bodies.   
“If he hadn’t given her the pills, if he’d made her take the poison like the rest of them, he’d be gone by now. We wouldn’t have found him so quickly, he might have already assumed a new identity by the time we connected it.” Sherlock said.   
John hummed in agreement. “I’m shocked that it took so little to convince those people to come, knowing they were going to die.”   
Sherlock nodded tiredly, leaning against the side of the cab on the ride home.   
“I read the messages when I opened it up, Sherlock. He didn’t compliment them or, I don’t know, flatter them into coming. He insulted them, belittled them. Told them that nobody wanted them anyway, and they were just fodder for the monsters.”   
Sherlock turned his head to look at John in bored disgust. “Are you trying to make a metaphor?”   
John chuckled. “I’m just saying, is all, is that when someone makes someone else feel bad, more often than not, that person gets an urge to prove their worth to the person manipulating them.”   
“I’m not being manipulated by Alex.” Sherlock was upright now, staring at John, who was keeping his eyes ahead.   
“Power is the ability to make someone do something they wouldn’t otherwise do. Power to make someone do something just because you tell them, or even hint to them, to do it.”   
Sherlock looked away from John, and said no more.   
***  
It was Friday and John was ready to get sloshed. He wanted to manually reset his hard drive. He wanted his crank turning man to be knocked off his ass.   
It had been a long week.   
John walked in the living room around seven to say goodbye to Sherlock and maybe excitedly add “don’t wait up” so he could feel like a teenager again.   
“Going out?”  
John nodded, adjusting his tee shirt. It was a little tighter than he usually wore, but it was leftover from his army days, when all he wore off uniform was band tees and dark jeans.   
“Mind if I join you?”   
John looked at Sherlock in surprise. “Uh, it’s probably just going to be me and Mike and a few mates getting pissed. In a pub.”  
“Yes, I’m interested. May I come?”  
John was taken aback, but agreed. Sherlock hopped up, apparently already ready to hit the pub in one of his tight silk shirts and posh trousers. Could probably pull in slacks, the gorgeous bastard.   
That’s how the two of them ended up at a booth in the local, with some of John’s old mates and Lestrade, who’d been invited by John.   
Sherlock was sipping some dark liquor, reclining in the booth next to the radio while the rest of them talked about sports and various other manly topics. John, sitting on a wooden chair pulled up to the edge of the table and thus sitting across the corner from Sherlock, regularly caught his eye to make sure he was still having a fun time and didn’t need to go home. Sherlock gave him a tight smile every time. It wasn’t very convincing, but John decided if he was making the effort to appear happy, he wanted to stay.   
The night seemed to be a rousing success, John halfway into his third and feeling a bit floaty, when he noticed Sherlock’s face scrunching in discomfort. He leaned forward to talk to him over the pop song blasting out of the jukebox. “Alright, Sherlock?”  
Sherlock reached forward and downed the rest of his second drink, and then held it up to John as evidence. “Need another. Bathroom.”  
Sherlock got up hurriedly, and John followed his gut and trailed him. Sherlock went into the bathroom, and after ten minutes of standing outside the door, John sighed and followed him in.   
Sherlock was sitting on the sinks, not in the toilets, just as John had expected.   
“Hey,” he said, leaning against the wall next to Sherlock as the room wobbled threateningly. “What’s going on?”   
Sherlock looked at knees at the edge of the bathroom counter. A man came in, peed, and walked out the door without coming anywhere near the sinks. Sherlock wrinkled his nose at the closing door before turning back to John. “I broke up with Alex.”   
“Oh.” John felt rather strange. Like his stomach was being shrink wrapped with warm plastic. “Are we… happy about that?”  
Sherlock shrugged. “He said it was for the best that I did. Since it wasn’t likely I was going to change.”  
John snorted. “Fuck his change. Not going toward your rent, is it?”   
Sherlock looked at him in confusion, before accepting the statement and nodding. “I do think it’s for the best. He said I--” Sherlock broke off, looking down at his palms. He was swaying slightly. “He said I already had a backup ready, anyway.”   
John slid slightly along the wall before righting himself. “A backup what?”   
Sherlock looked hard at John. Opened his mouth, closed it again. “Not important. I think the song is over now and I can go sit out there again until you’re ready to leave.”   
John shook his head as Sherlock jumped off the sink, taking another step forward to stick his landing. “No, let’s go home. I’m tired of hearing Bill talk about that one charity game he did, anyway.”   
Sherlock snorted, following John through the bar to collect their coats. “It wasn’t even. I know the game he’s talking about, it was a fundraiser but the charity is well known for giving their ceos six figure salaries out of the donations.”   
John looked up at Sherlock in awe. “You know, I--” John frowned, following Sherlock to the curb as he hailed a cab. “I love when you say things.”   
Sherlock looked down at him as the cab pulled up. Their faces were only a few inches away from each other. If they were the same height, John probably could’ve felt his breath on his mouth. The thought sent a shiver through him.   
But then they were climbing in the cab, and the moment was lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fuck ya two cents if it aint goin toward the bills!! The song playing is "Good as Hell" by Lizzo.


	11. Lestrade on the Case

The beginning of the end started, as most things start in the Holmes-Watson household, with a call with Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade.   
“Greg, mate, I’m calling in that favor you promised,” John said. He glanced down both hallways off the living room to double check that Sherlock really wasn’t home.   
“You know, when a guy says, ‘I owe you one’,” Lestrade grumbled on the other side of the line, “It doesn't mean he actually owes you one. It’s just something people say.”   
“Yeah, I know, but you are going to help me because you are actually my friend,” John said placatingly.   
Lestrade sighed. “What is it?”  
“You remember about a month ago, that cult case, where Sherlock got the call from his boyfriend?”   
“Yeah, are they still dating?”   
“No, and that’s actually why I’m asking for a favor,” John continued quickly before Lestrade could reply. “Now, don’t blow your stack here, but I need you to…”   
Lestrade, on the other end of the line, leaned back in his desk chair, eyes raised. After a brief moment of contemplation, he set his feet up on the desk and agreed. Then he settled into a long discussion of details and backup plans with John, before hanging up the phone and shaking his head at himself. When he’d made Detective Inspector, he’d expected gruesome murders, grizzly detectives, and oodles of paperwork, but he hadn’t prepared himself for all of the hell that went along with Sherlock Holmes and company.   
***  
A crime came just a few days later.   
John and Sherlock got the text and went down to get a cab. John felt the usually adrenaline in his veins for the thrill of a new case, alongside the new addition of nervousness sitting in his gut.   
He was about to, hopefully, fool the most observant man in England and possibly the world. He glanced over at Sherlock, who was looking over maps on his phone.   
The stepped out of the cab, Sherlock helpfully paying the driver for once. John would be worried that he was altering his behavior after Alex took shots at his levels of kindness, if it weren’t for how much money he was saving.   
As they walked up to the set of flats surrounded by caution tape and flashing police cars, John briefly wondered about Sherlock and money. He had it, yes, obviously, but where did it come from? They made tiddlywinks on private cases, and most of their cases were for Lestrade, which were all nonprofit. Actually, he knew that his rent was suspiciously low for inner London, which lent itself to the implication that Sherlock was paying more than half the rent. Where was it coming from? Who was paying for it all? Who got the bill for those bespoke suits that hugged Sherlock’s ass like they never wanted to let go?   
John, still trailing Sherlock to the body of a middle aged man dead in an overstuffed armchair, then stopped wondering about money and his thoughts were rather filled with more on Sherlock’s rear end. The thoughts were augmented as Sherlock kneeled down quite spectacularly to inspect the tread on the man’s boots.   
Lestrade came in. “Hello, Sherlock,” he said.   
Sherlock grunted.   
“Hello, John,” he said.   
“Greg, hello,” John said amicably, stepping over to be almost shoulder to shoulder to the detective inspector.   
“How are you doing then?”   
“Oh, as good as can be expected. Rubbing sniffly noses, assuaging WebMD fears, the usual down at the clinic.”   
“Between himself and the job, do you get any free time?”   
“Well, I do meet up with some old mates to play rugby once a week. I really should exercise more,” John said, patting a hand on his abdomen.   
“Oh, I don’t know about that. You look quite fit to me.” Lestrade and John both glanced over at Sherlock, who was now on his back, head under the springs of the chair.   
“That’s kind of you, but I’m not what I used to be. Should’ve seen me back when I was on active duty!”   
“I’d have liked to see that,” Lestrade said smoothly, dropping his voice deeper.   
John giggled, only half acting because Lestrade was actually being quite amusing.   
“So, Sherlock, still dating that Scottish berk?” Lestrade said, turning away slightly to direct his question to the back of the chair.   
“Nope,” Sherlock said, entirely focused on combing aside the man’s thinning hair.   
“Mm, and you, John, you have a boyfriend?” Sherlock looked up at this, but Lestrade and John pretended not to notice.   
John blushed, which was very handy, since he couldn’t really blush on command. “Haven’t had a boyfriend in years, but no, yeah, I’m single right now.”   
“Well that’s good,” Lestrade said, smiling. “I am as well, divorce all through.”   
“The milk!” Sherlock said loudly. John and Lestrade snapped to look at him. He blinked in surprise, as if the deduction took him unawares. “Uh, the milk. The poison is in the milk. Arrest the housekeeper.”   
“He doesn’t have a housekeeper,” Lestrade called after Sherlock who was already starting toward the stairs.   
“Wife, helpmate, whatever,” Sherlock called back. “Come ON, John.”   
John smiled at Lestrade and stage whispered, “Thanks,” before following down the staircase.   
***  
“That was fast,” John said on the way home.   
Sherlock hummed in acknowledgement.   
“Very fast, actually. How could you tell the poison was in the milk without testing it?”   
“Because it wasn’t.”   
“What, the poison wasn’t-- Hold on, Sherlock, did you just intentionally mislead the police on a murder case?”   
“It wasn’t murder, he had an aneurysm. Or heart attack in his sleep. Or a-- I don't know, some other normal thing.”   
“Then why did you tell Lestrade he’d been poisoned? What if--”   
“They’ll test the milk, find it’s not poisoned, and by that point the coroner will come back with the results that say natural death.”   
“But why mislead them?”   
“Lestrade was irritating me, I wanted to waste his time.”   
John tried very, very hard not to smirk. “What was he doing that was irritating?”   
“Talking.”   
“To me?”  
“Well I was the only other person there, John, surely your deductive skills can achieve that answer.”   
“I just don’t see what was so irritating about what he was saying,” John said, shrugging nonchalantly. John really was a very bad actor, but Sherlock was so worked up that he didn’t appear to notice.   
“Well of course you weren’t irritated he was-- he was complimenting you.”   
John turned to face Sherlock, who was glaring down at him from the other end of the taxi seat. “People can compliment me, you know. It’s not against the law to flirt with John Watson.”   
Sherlock grumbled.   
“Words, Sherlock, use real words,” John said.   
“It should be!” Sherlock burst out, rather loudly in the contained cab. They both made eye contact with the cabbie in the rearview mirror, and John held a hand up with a tight smile to apologize.   
John turned back to Sherlock, took a deep breath, and opened his mouth.   
Nope, can’t do that, eyes too-- eyes. John turned his gaze down to his lap, instead. “Sherlock, I know you’ve just gotten out of a relationship, but maybe you should just-- consider. Think about why you want people arrested for flirting with me.”  
John risked a glance back up at Sherlock. He was staring at John, eyebrows so far down over his eyes that he must be getting a headache, looking violently confused.   
The cab stopped, and they climbed out and walked up to 221B.   
John was about to walk up to his bedroom when Sherlock stopped him with a gentle hand on his elbow. John had already taken one step up, making them at almost the same height. They were close again, and John was right, he could feel Sherlock’s breath on his face. It smelled like tea.   
“Okay,” Sherlock said slowly, glancing over John’s face before landing back on his eyes. “I’ll think about it.”   
***  
John occasionally wished that his flatmate ran on a different operating system. Surely even Windows 98 could move faster than Sherlock when it came to “thinking”, because for that, Sherlock laid on a couch and didn’t move for days, continuously applying and dis-applying nicotine patches.   
John liked to imagine the dial-up screech coming from his mouth as he laid there, eyes closed, hands under his chin.   
He’d actually also rather like to have a ticker tape coming out. A live feed of every erroneous conclusion Sherlock came to before he reached the right one. John, being a fairly confident man, and backed by some evidence from Stamford and Lestrade, knew what conclusion Sherlock could come to-- that he was in fact, attracted to John.   
“Well, but it could be--” one of John’s internal debaters piped up. The other debater quickly slapped a hand over his mouth, and reached out a hand to the crank-turner, who handed him duct tape.   
John puttered around in mild anxiety for two days, making tea and setting it by Sherlock, making toast and setting it by Sherlock (which was definitely acknowledged, since Sherlock ate the crusts off both pieces and left only the buttery middle bits, the absolute child), and making himself presentable and sitting by Sherlock.   
And ye, on the third day, Sherlock awoke. Or rather, gasped, and sat up with extraordinary speed.   
“Alright, Sherlock?” John asked, leaning his head in from the kitchen.   
Sherlock nodded, looking entirely dazed. He turned to look up at John, who had come over to hand him a cup of tea.   
“Yes, yes, um, I do have a question,” Sherlock said. He stood up to crowd over John, between them only their respective hands holding cups of tea. “Can I have sex with you?”   
John’s crank man threw his hands up in frustration. “Excuse me?”   
“Sorry,” Sherlock said, cringing in embarrassment. “I meant, may I have sex with you?”


	12. If Wishes were Horses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter before the epilogue lads!

John thought a lot about normal people. He imagined a very normal life where he woke in a normal bed, had breakfast with a normal roommate politely ignoring his presence, went to a normal job where he only called off when he was sick, and then had a normal dinner with a very normal pretty lady who talked about how much she loved normal television.   
Instead, he had this fucking menagerie.   
“Sherlock,” John sighed, sitting heavily on the couch. “You can’t just-- say that.”   
Sherlock furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. “I just did, you saw me.”   
“You may not just say that, then,” John said. Sherlock dropped on to the couch next to him.   
“Why not? You were clearly jealous while I was dating Alex, this morning I was jealous that Lestrade was flirting with you-- very strange of him, by the way, will be investigating that-- and we are both obviously attracted to each other. What in there prevents me from politely asking for your consent to sex?”   
John set down his tea mug. He leaned forward and put his thumb and pointer on the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath.   
“Real quickly, you do know that the Lestrade thing was three days ago, and not this morning, right?”   
Sherlock blinked.   
“Right. Okay,” John said. “I need to have a little think myself, luckily I don’t take as long as you.”   
Sherlock blinked again, this time in a mildly offended way.   
John turned to his debaters.   
“Mmmf mmff ffmm,” The first debater said.   
The second debater sighed and ripped off his duct tape.   
“Jesus fuck, that hurt!” The first debater objected, rubbing at his mouth.   
“Nothing hurts, idiot, you’re a metaphor for human thought. Now let's get on with the question at hand.”   
“Should we have sex with Sherlock? Sherlock, long legs, sweet ass, mouth-like-a-sex-doll Sherlock? That’s up for debate?”   
“Well, consider this: what if it’s only once?”   
“Oh, he’ll come back for more. We’re not called three continents Watson for nothing.”   
“No, no,” the other debater said. “What if he doesn’t want to, you know, be with us?”   
“Have you seen it? It’s huge, it’s perfect, he’ll be salivating the second we get it out of our pants.”   
“Can you get your mind out of the gutter?”   
“No, not really,” the first debater mused, popping a donut hole in his mouth.   
“Listen, we really only have one chance here. If we want Sherlock, all of him, the relationship part, we need to take things slowly. Take Sherlock to the movies, romance him, a gentle kiss on the stairs, a nice snog on the couch, and then maybe, a few weeks from now, we’ll be able to slide home in that glorious ass and be together forever.”   
“Okay, sounds great, but consider this,” the first debater retorted, mouth full of donut. “We could fuck him now. Like, right now.”   
The second debater acquiesced. “Yup, yeah. Very good point there. Alright, send the signal up to head office.”   
John leaned back on the sofa, looking up at Sherlock again, who was still sat stiffly on the couch, holding his cup of tea. “Yeah, alright,” John said.   
“You were completely silent for three minutes and twenty seconds,” Sherlock said, raising an eyebrow.   
“Yeah, like I said, I work faster than you.”   
“How can your brain possibly work faster than mine?” Sherlock didn’t mean it to be insulting, and he did have a point, so John let that slide.   
“More hands make light work,” John shrugged, taking a sip of his tea.   
Sherlock nodded slowly, pursing his lips. “So you do actually, er… want to..?”  
John smirked, slowly setting his tea down on the table. He adjusted himself on the sofa so he could properly look up at Sherlock, making sure he had his eye contact and total focus, and nodded. “Yes please.” He said politely.   
Sherlock also nodded, seeming a bit hypnotized. John took pity on him, leaned forward, placed a hand on his neck (he was happy to note that the pulse against his palm was racing), and kissed Sherlock full on the lips.   
John, in his reminiscence in future years, would wish that their first time together wasn’t frantically humping each other on the sofa like randy teenagers. He really did wish he’d taken just a few moments more to consider, to take Sherlock out for dinner, and have wine together, and laugh with each other before rubbing off together on the sofa like randy teenagers. But really, who could blame him? He’d had a whole two months of awareness of Sherlock’s sexual identity and a subsequent two months of torturous sitting it out while the Macfucker sodomized his true love.   
Sherlock, looking back on their first time, would wish that he’d been more aware. He wish he’d paid more attention, cataloged every brush of John’s lips, filed away every touch, stored every groan and curse in a whole new wing of his mind palace. He wish he’d done something then to prove himself worthy, show John some little sex trick he didn’t know, give John the most amazing orgasm of his entire life, teach him how very very enjoyable sex with two cocks could be. As it turns out, Sherlock wouldn’t need that, since even without proving himself, John would come back for more and more and more, nearly every day for the next two weeks before the honeymoon period was over and they settled down to sex only a few times a week and after cases. And when Sherlock wore the purple shirt, or when John wore the little stripey shirt that made him look like a pirate first mate. Or when there was tea on and they both had some time to waste waiting for the kettle to boil. Actually, strike that, they haven’t yet left the honeymoon. But really, Sherlock couldn’t be blamed for not observing and storing away every detail of their first time. After all, he’d had three years of waiting for John, since that funny little man with the tanned hands and pseudo-limp had walked into his morgue, and subsequent three years of yearning and pining and waiting for the day that John wanted him, too. He’d been a bit overwhelmed.   
And it didn’t really matter that neither of them had made the absolute most of their first time together, since they had many, many, many times after that to make it up.


	13. Epilogue

John received lots of messages about cases, but they were usually sent to the blog. This one came to his personal email, which was unusual. It took a moment of searching his brain to remember who doctor Wilkney was, but once John remembered, he politely asked Sherlock to take the case on so he could solve it for his friend.   
“And you knew this Wilkney man, when, exactly?”   
“It was when I’d just joined up, he was my ROTC trainer at the college. I guess he’s moved on to a bigger university now.”   
“What’s the case?”   
“Erm, he thinks someone is embezzling-- I know I had a picture with him, somewhere,” John said, distractedly looking around the living room for his photo album.   
Sherlock blushed lightly. He stood and quickly walked out of the room, returning a moment later with a small tin box.   
“That’s it, that’s my box of-- hey, where did you find that?”   
Sherlock blushed a little heavier now. “Not important. Here’s the picture of you and Wilkney.” He shuffled through the photos for a moment with apparent familiarity before finding the picture. John was standing in front of the sign that said “ROTC recruitment”, smiling at the camera, arms around a taller man in more formal military dress and some other recruits.   
“How did you know that was--”   
Sherlock neatly flipped the photo in his fingers to reveal John’s neat handwriting on the back that indicated the members of the photo.   
“Oh, yeah.”   
***  
“So what college is he at now, since it clearly isn’t the same one you attended?”   
John looked out the window of the cab. “Imperial College. You’re right, I never could’ve afforded it back then. Or now, probably.”   
“Don’t be ridiculous John, you can afford anything I can afford now,” Sherlock smirked over at John. “And I can afford rather a lot.”   
John smiled back and laced their hands together on the leather seat. “Posh boy.”  
“Bit of rough,” Sherlock responded, mouth twisted in a suggestive grin.   
“I have a question actually, which I think is appropriate to ask now that we’re a bit-- familiar.”   
“I don’t think you can get any more familiar with a person than you did last night,” Sherlock pointed out.   
John blushed. “No but actually, how do you get your money?”   
“You won’t believe me if I told you.”  
“Well you’re going to tell me, so.” John said.   
“The stock market. Do it all from my phone, I have a trader who sets up most for me, and I just give him nudges when I see a market trend in my daily life.”   
“So you went to a community school like me?” John asked facetiously.   
“Of course not, I still had a trust fund, my parents are rich as kings,” Sherlock replied neutrally. “I just make some money of my own, as well. And Mycroft helps, though I deny that help where I can.”   
“That’s interesting… so do you, hmm, deduce the stocks then?”   
“You can’t deduce things, only people, John. But yes, I deduce what people want based on the actions in the market and place my investment with them.”   
“That’s so cool,” John said.   
Sherlock looked over at him.   
“I mean like, that’s cool. You have to acknowledge that’s cool.”   
“Playing the stock market is cool?”   
“Have you ever even seen Wolf of Wall Street? It’s cool, it’s a fashionable profession.”   
“I’m not a stock trader, and yes, I have.”  
“Wait, you did see the movie?”   
Sherlock bent his head to conceal a secret smile. “I enjoy the work of Leonardo Dicaprio.”   
The cab pulled up and Sherlock gratefully rushed out. John let him go, but committed that to memory to grill him later. Now that John was safely out of the firing range for being called homophobic, he loved to tease Sherlock about his “type”.   
Sherlock looked through the financial files while John chatted with Wilkney. That seemed to be his job, most of the time; distract the normal people so that Sherlock could get at the important information. He rather suspected that Sherlock didn’t like being observed as he worked, since he looked so silly contorting himself all over to observe tiny details, and John was happy to draw the gaze away.   
Sherlock, of course, solved the case post haste. John knew it barely achieved a four rating on the Holmes-Watson Case Interest Scale, but Sherlock took it because John wanted to see an old friend. He was actually very human when he wanted to be. And he had more motivation, since John was putting a bit more human inside him.   
John snorted, causing Sherlock and Wilkney to look over at him. He shook his head to dismiss the thought.   
Sherlock and John were walking back across the green to the main road, munching on some food from the campus cafe, when John spotted a familiar figure coming the opposite way down their path.   
“Uh-oh, Sherlock, twelve o’clock.”   
“I see him.”  
“He sees us.”   
“We’re going to have to talk to him,” Sherlock hissed.   
John withheld his answering groan since the Macfucker was now within hearing distance.   
“Sherlock, what a surprise to see you here!” Alex exclaimed, shaking his hand with rather more warmness than was called for in the situation. “And the good doctor Watson.”   
Neither Alex nor John made any move to shake each other’s hand.   
“What brings you to Imperial?”   
“A case, a secretary was transposing numbers and making it appear as though her boss was embezzling.”  
“Ooh that must’ve been fun,” Alex said playfully. “Did your little helper figure it out for you again?”   
Television producer Emmy Rossum had been the number one spot on John Watson’s shitlist for seven years running, for reasons that won’t be discussed here, but was dethroned immediately when Alexander Cameron called John “little helper”.   
Rather than let loose a scathing remark to Alex, however, Sherlock looked down at John fondly. Despite himself, John smiled back at him. “As it happens, I cannot solve any case without John.”  
When they both looked back at Alex, a second longer than was really appropriate to stare at each other in public, he was wearing a tight smile.   
“I see you finally used your backup,” Alex said. His smile looked rather more like just showing teeth at this point.   
Sherlock smiled serenely back at him. “Yes I did, but best not to dwell on the past. We had a good run, Alex, but I’ve got my first choice now. Toodles,” Sherlock said, brushing past the stunned professor on the path. John glanced up at his face, just to memorize the horrified look, before walking around his other side and reconnecting with Sherlock.   
He took his hand, and smiled. John Watson was not second line.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well there you have it folks! Thank you so much for following on this! I am so grateful for your nice comments and kudos!


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